Curmudgeonly & Skeptical presents Boned Jello: Hemingway, Hounded by the Feds

Saturday, July 02, 2011

Hemingway, Hounded by the Feds

Those Bastards!
Hemingway, Hounded by the Feds

^“_”

EARLY one morning, 50 years ago today, while his wife, Mary, slept upstairs, Ernest Hemingway went into the vestibule of his Ketchum, Idaho, house, selected his favorite shotgun from the rack, inserted shells into its chambers and ended his life. There were many differing explanations at the time: that he had terminal cancer or money problems, that it was an accident, that he’d quarreled with Mary. None were true.

[...]

“The feds.”

“What?”

“They tailed us all the way. Ask Duke.”

“Well ... there was a car back of us out of Hailey.”

“Why are F.B.I. agents pursuing you?” I asked.

“It’s the worst hell. The goddamnedest hell. They’ve bugged everything. That’s why we’re using Duke’s car. Mine’s bugged. Everything’s bugged. Can’t use the phone. Mail intercepted.”

We rode for miles in silence. As we turned into Ketchum, Ernest said quietly: “Duke, pull over. Cut your lights.” He peered across the street at a bank. Two men were working inside. “What is it?” I asked.

“Auditors. The F.B.I.’s got them going over my account.”

[,,,]

Decades later, in response to a Freedom of Information petition, the F.B.I. released its Hemingway file. It revealed that beginning in the 1940s J. Edgar Hoover had placed Ernest under surveillance because he was suspicious of Ernest’s activities in Cuba. Over the following years, agents filed reports on him and tapped his phones. The surveillance continued all through his confinement at St. Mary’s Hospital. It is likely that the phone outside his room was tapped after all. [...] - Hemingway, Hounded by the Feds

But, Wait!

Hemingway revealed as failed KGB spy
Notes from Stalin-era intelligence archives show 'agent Argo' as a willing recruit in 1941

“

It always interests me when I hear the ferocity with which Hollywood entertainers, academics, and the media oppose the label of “communist.” Nevermind the fact that Hollywood was rampant with communists - it is no longer, according to the communists themselves. - Average Joe

”

cuzzin ricky

Rodger the Real King of France 7/02/2011 06:27:00 PM 11 Comments

"If the number of Islamic terror attacks continues at the current rate, candlelight vigils will soon be the number-one cause of global warming. "
Argus Hamilton

11 comments:

bocopro said...: O.K. But I think I'll just go with what Vonnegut said about him:

"All his life he tried to drown something inside him with booze. Finally he just gave up and shot it."; 7/2/11, 6:45 PM
JMcD said...: I'm not right proud to own up to it, but I never read any of Hemingway's books.
Over the years of my life, I did however see many movies based on his stories and read about him, and my impression has been that he was most definately a Communist sympathiser.
Well, wasn't most of Hollywood and the "arts" back in the day. (99percent?)
Much better nowadays. (92 percent?)

P.S.....J.Edgar has caught a lot of flack in recent years, but if I had my way, we'd dig him up, Frankenstein him, and put him back in charge of the goddamn F.B.I.; 7/2/11, 6:48 PM
Sven said...: What bocopro said^^^^

Tales of his madness down in the Keys still resonate.

I am reminded of a less well known madman from just before my generation: Richard Braughtigan. He wrote classic Hippie prose and poetry that was delightfully and twisted by his own mad mind.

- "Trout Fishing in America"
- "The Pill-vs-The Springhill Mine Disaster"
- "A Confederate General from Big Sur"
- "In Watermelon Sugar"

All come to mind.

He retreated to NorCal, bottle and .357 mag in hand...(according to his daughter)

Like Hemingway, demon rum haunted his ever move until the only thing left was to kill it...by putting a bullet in his own brain pan.

"In Watermelon Sugar the deeds were done and done again as my life is done in watermelon sugar."

-- Never like J. Edgar or any of his fambly. They, like Nixon, remind me of English estuary eels...slimy, oily and good for one thing: lamp oil!

But that's just me.; 7/2/11, 7:25 PM
Anonymous said...: Well of course he was a commie, he was with them in Spain, but that was a very confused time in the history of man. He wrote great fiction, and he lived a manly life, and when he couldn't, he did what he could do.

Casca; 7/2/11, 8:08 PM
Wabano said...: Glandular imbalance...hereditary...

His daughters offed themselves, his mother did, his father,
his grand parents both sides...it is a wonder they managed to reproduce.

Darwin award...too bad it didn't happen before mating.

There was millions of commies, nazis, anarcho-trotsko-idiots...they didn't off themselves
but they did terminate untold millions...too bad they didn't have Ernest's syndrome...

He stated that his electro-shocks treatments had erased his memory, and since he wrote his
stories from the memories of his numerous adventures and writing was his only reason to live,
he then had no use for life anymore.

Lesson number one, dont get electro-shock treatments if you are an adventure writer.; 7/2/11, 10:23 PM
gadfly said...: There seems to be more surreal tales about Hemmingway than I could ever imagine. How about this twist from 1983:

"A literary scholar says he has turned up new evidence of an effort by the Federal Bureau of Investigation to discredit Ernest Hemingway in his attempt to spy on potential Nazi sympathizers in Cuba during World War II."; 7/2/11, 10:34 PM
Anonymous said...: "...inserted shells into its chambers..."

Why would you need more than one?

jd; 7/3/11, 9:05 AM
molonlabe28 said...: Ernest was not a KGB agent.

He took shrapnel in Italy as an ambulance driver in WWI and was badly injured.

He cruised the Carribean in WWII patroling for German U-boats.

He is a man who never set foot in college and, yet, is by far the most influential writer of the 20th century. No other writer is even remotely close to him in his communicative skills.

Last summer I went to Ketchum in hopes of seeing his home there, like I have done with his Key West home many times, but I found that it was in a gated community.

I had to settle for a picture of me at his grave.

He was a tremendous writer and an adventurer.

He suffered from mental disorders which are considerably more treatable today than during his lifetime. He didn't ask for his mental health profile, but he had to play the hand that life dealt him.

He drank too much and was not a good husband (at least not to Hadley or to Pauline, his first and second wives, respectively).

But I sure wish that I had known him.

He liked hunting, fishing, boxing and bull fighting.

His posthumous publications (e.g. Islands in the Stream, The Dangerous Summer and A Moveable Feast) are among his best in my estimation.

And he could communicate feelings without sounding like an intellectual.

Now we know that he was illegally hounded by a perverted bureaucrat who wasted time and money gathering gossip and dirt on many law-abiding Americans.

The harsh comments should be directed at J. Edgar Hoover, not Ernest Hemingway.; 7/3/11, 4:17 PM
JMcD said...: Well, I admit it.
I've never been much of a reader of fiction.
History is more to my liking.History of anything.Countries, people, ways of life, goods, manufactures, religion, all make my kind of reading.
I think that since fiction is not my cup o' tea, I'm not at all interested in the macho life styles of the writers of fiction, and in the case of Ernest, I would probably find bullfighting boring and a distasteful spending of an afternoon watching men use an expensive way to make steaks and roasts.Of course, to each his own.
Well, no matter his lifestyle, I will continue to believe that he and many other writers were Communists or at least sympathisers.
I am disposed to forgive Middle Europeans in some cases who found themselves in a situation of having to choose between Nazis and Communists and leaving themselves completely at risk of being slaughtered by the unchosen ideology, but I'm not so quick to forgive Americans who in their zeal to fight Communism, joined the Nazis, or the citizens who hated Nazis and joined the Communists. There were millions of Americans who joined neither but decided to remain faithful to the ideals of the Founding Fathers.
I hate the people of this country who joined these totaltarian parties of mass murderers, each using the deeds of the other side as justification.
These "noble" writers, actors, media moguls and businessmen wanted to destroy this country, and still do.
I repeat, "I hate them", more than you can imagine.
As far a J. Edgar Hoover goes, I doubt that he was a perfect human being,but it will always seem to me that he would have done anything to defend the country.
It just seems to me that in the last several decades,spies and leaks are as free flowing as a bad case of diarrhea and way more evil smelling....I must believe that many of these problems are due to inside the Bureau moles.I also think it often goes, high up.
These days I say to myself, "self", I don't know for sure what the Russians (Communists) are up to, but I believe I know what the American Liberals/Socialists (unadmitted Communists in most cases)are up to.
I don't want to leave the impression that I want us all to forfeit any freedoms like having citizens having files kept on them by an out of control FBI, that are not warranted, I will say that there are always going to be dangerous people that need to be watched and evaluated.
Or, we can just go along with our lives, with our heads up our asses, pretending that no one means us harm and just make sure that the unicorns are fed their rose blossoms and honey.
Personally I say, "Screw the unicorns".; 7/3/11, 9:42 PM
DougM said...: His unfinished work was "The Old Man and the CIA"; 7/3/11, 10:49 PM
Anonymous said...: Hemingway's entire body of work is a paen to American individualism. The accusation that he was a "communist" is simply laughable. He was good friends with Gary Cooper, who testified as a friendly witness before the House UnAmerican Committee, speaking out against communism in the film industry.

Hemingway was also good friends with Ezra Pound until the latter became a sympathizer of Mussolini and Hitler, after which Hemingway cut off all contact with Pound and expressed the sentiment that Pound had gone insane.

It must be remembered that the modern concept of Fascism and Communism as separate political identities is a fabrication of the Progressive Left. (Certainly the National Socialist German Workers Party did not espouse any distinction.) Throughout his life Hemingway was an adamant opponent of dictatorial totalitarianism everywhere that he saw it. Until after the 2nd world war, most saw the Bolsheviks - whose political philosophy was not well publicized in the West - as friends or at least as useful allies against the German, Italian, and Arab Fascists. It is not at all surprising that Hemingway chose to work with the Russians to search out Nazi U-boats off the Atlantic coast (a real and present danger largely hushed up by Roosevelt's state media hacks.) What most Americans don't know or don't choose to remember was that Nazism was very, very popular in America up until the bombing of Pearl Harbor, whereas the Bolsheviks were seen as having brought Russia freedom from what had often been described as the dictatorial rule of the Tsars.

America also has a rich history of communal work and attitude, such as the famous phenomenon of "barn raisings" and "log cabin building", where the entire frontier community would come together to build a home or a barn for a family. This pastoral ideal (certainly attractive to someone like Hemingway) was what stories (which we now know were highly censored) of "Russian Communism" conjured up to many Americans. It was only much later that the truth about Stalin's totalitarian, dictatorial, socialist fascism came to light. Meanwhile, most conservative individualists in America saw the scheming, corrupt and famously pro-fascist (just not pro-German fascism) FDR as the true enemy of liberty. The reports of Hemingway's KGB association have him essentially cutting off contact at just about the time that, following FDR's never-too-soon death, Americans began waking up to the true evil of Russian Socialism, mirrored by Truman's increased focus on containing communism.

J Edgar Hoover, on the other hand, was a corrupt, panty-wearing, degenerate freak who habitually broke the law and used the resources of the FBI for his personal reasons and vendettas while maintaining working relationships with organized crime kingpins.

Throughout the 20th century and today, has always been the members of Federal U.S. Government which was most eager to "ally" with the truly evil representatives of Fascism, Socialism, and Totalitarianism.; 7/4/11, 11:20 PM

Saturday, July 02, 2011

Hemingway, Hounded by the Feds

11 comments:

Post a Comment